earthforce_1 writes: "Under a newly proposed bill, police will be given new powers to eavesdrop on Internet based communication.
All ISPs will be forced to "upgrade" their systems to allow law enforcement to tap in, and obtain information about users and their digital conversations, under the proposed legislation, with the usual excuses. "Terrorist groups, pornographers and pedophile networks, illegal traffickers in weapons, drugs and human beings, money launderers and cyber criminals, Internet and telemarketing fraudsters all use technology to develop activities, perpetrate crimes and avoid detection," the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police said in a November 2008 position paper supporting a new law.
Federal Privacy Commissioner Jennifer Stoddard recently warned that forcing ISPs to surrender information "is a serious step forward toward mass surveillance" that violates the rights of Canadians.
http://www.canada.com/Feds+give+cops+Internet+snooping+powers/1706191/story.html"

earthforce_1 writes: "Under Obama/Biden's watch, while everybody is distracted with the economy, an RIAA dream team is being assembled to head the Department of Justice. Expect more single mothers, dead people and babies to be sued in the future. It seems an ill wind blows out of Washington."

earthforce_1 writes: "The vested interests of restrictive copyright are stacking the deck in Canada. The Public Policy Forum Symposium on intellectual property reform has bowed to pressure from certain interests and dis-invited noted copyright scholar Howard Knopf. The public policy forum's stated mandate: http://www.ppforum.ca/en/aboutus/ ".. is to strive for excellence in government — to serve as a neutral, independent forum for open dialogue on public policy, and to encourage reform in public sector management." Yet the forum has been completely stacked by those advocating restrictive copyright laws. For some reason, the U.S. Ambassador to Canada, and former head of the Canadian Motion Picture Industry Association have been invited — apparently they are perceived to have a more neutral view of what Canadian copyright laws should be?
More information available here. http://excesscopyright.blogspot.com/ Boing-Boing http://www.boingboing.net/2008/04/26/copyright-crazies-ga.html and Micael Geist http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/2872/196/ have both picked up the story on their blog:"

earthforce_1 writes: "It looks like the founders at digg.com have received and complied with a takedown notice regarding the HD-DVD master keys, and blocking accounts of some users attempting to repost the keys. Subscribers have revolted en-masse and have reposted the keys in at least a dozen story threads and thousands of comments in countless ways. They also modded up all stories about the censored keys until at one point, every single front page story was about the HD-DVD keys! Until the original story was taken down, it was modded up over 15,000 times, an all time record.

This has been a totally unprecedented subscriber revolt against the website moderators, and at least one story thread suggests one of the founders had taken promotional money from the HD-DVD consortium."